Non-traditional Domains Research Articles

Specification and validation of process constraints for flexible workflows

Workflow systems have traditionally focused on the so-called production processes which are characterized by pre-definition, high volume, and repetitiveness. Recently, the deployment of workflow systems in non-traditional domains such as collaborative applications, e-learning and cross-organizational process integration, have put forth new requirements for flexible and dynamic specification. However, this flexibility cannot be offered at the expense of control, a critical requirement of business processes. In this paper, we will present a foundation set of constraints for flexible workflow specification. These constraints are intended to provide an appropriate balance between flexibility and control. The constraint specification framework is based on the concept of “pockets of flexibility” which allows ad hoc changes and/or building of workflows for highly flexible processes. Basically, our approach is to provide the ability to execute on the basis of a partially specified model, where the full specification of the model is made at runtime, and may be unique to each instance. The verification of dynamically built models is essential. Where as ensuring that the model conforms to specified constraints does not pose great difficulty, ensuring that the constraint set itself does not carry conflicts and redundancy is an interesting and challenging problem. In this paper, we will provide a discussion on both the static and dynamic verification aspects. We will also briefly present Chameleon, a prototype workflow engine that implements these concepts.

The electronic procurement of ideas

This paper focuses on two non-traditional but important domains for electronic procurement - electronic government and electronic democracy. In particular, we describe how electronic consultation, an important form of electronic democracy, is being used to procure ideas from partnership organisations and citizenry and hence support the policy formulation processes at a devolved regional assembly in the UK. Such forms of intellectual procurement are seen by many to be significant ways in which government may re-engage with its populace and address issues of social exclusion in the area of democratic participation.

Data warehousing in environmental digital libraries

The purpose of this article is to present what we view as a new application of data warehousing in non-traditional domains such as environmental monitoring and research, biomedical applications, and other types of digital libraries (DL). While the work we present here focuses on an environmental data warehouse, the ideas are equally applicable to other DL environments. Data warehousing has been embraced by the professional IT community with many successful implementations reported in the retail, insurance, finance, and other industries [7]. For the most part, traditional data warehouses share the following common features. First, virtually all the data propagated from the operational systems and data sources to the data warehouse is either numeric or character-based. The data warehouse database contains mostly aggregated and summarized data in numeric format. Next, operational systems and data sources are identified early on in the warehouse development cycle. Once the warehouse is operational, new data sources are often difficult to integrate into the data warehouse schema. Quite often the warehouse database is designed around a core set of business needs that are decided upon in advance. The set of queries that can be addressed by the warehouse might therefore be fixed. By contrast, data warehouses to support DLs must contend with a variety of multimedia data types from a collection of component systems that may grow over time.

Women in charge: Politeness and directives in the speech of Japanese women

ABSTRACTThis article explores the linguistic practices of Japanese men and women giving directions to subordinates. Previous research on language and gender across a number of languages has equated the speech of women with powerlessness. The literature on Japanese women's speech would support this notion. It characterizes Japanese female speech as soft, polite, indirect, in sum, as powerless. This presents problems for women who must command. The present study, an extension of my previous work on Japanese female speech (Shibamoto 1985, 1987) centered on women in more typically female roles, examines the directives of women in positions of authority in traditional and nontraditional domains and compares them with the directive forms chosen by men in similar positions. Explanations for the differences found are placed within the frameworks of a general theory of politeness and the culturally specific, gendered strategies for encoding politeness and authority in Japanese. (Sociolinguistics, language and gender, politeness)